Chapter 62
Chapter 62
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 62
Chapter Title: Revenge Belongs to Those Who Seek It... (6)
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“How’s life been lately?”
The foreman asked as he poured me a drink. A cheap, hard-to-find old brand of soju filled the glass with a glug-glug.
“I feel like I’m dying of exhaustion.”
I answered with a half-sigh, half-complaint.
Ever since Mignium pulled me back from the brink of death, I hadn’t had a single peaceful day. Fighting, killing... and now I’d even tangled with a dragon.
“Like when you first started as a cleanup guy?”
“...Nah, not quite that bad.”
I scratched the back of my head, thinking back to those clumsy days when everything felt so foreign.
Back then, the gear I’d wrecked cost more than three months of James’s salary.
The whole cleanup guild had called me a walking disaster.
Maybe the foreman was reminiscing about those times too—he chuckled and tilted his glass. The sharp scent of diluted soju wafted through the air.
“Dung Beetle.”
He called me after draining his glass. That familiar, pine-like voice that always sounded good.
“Yes, Foreman?”
“If it’s too hard, you can quit anytime.”
Quit? With so many bastards left to kill?
I blinked at him.
“...I haven’t even really started yet.”
“That’s exactly why now’s the perfect time. You haven’t killed anyone famous, so stop here, start fresh with a new identity, and live a new life.”
“...”
“Kill the president or even a minister, and see how the world looks at you.”
“...Like a terrorist who murdered a minister, probably.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
Okay with it? That’s when I finally looked up and met the foreman’s eyes straight on.
Above his wrinkled eyelids, eyes full of worry stared back at me.
“Fail, and you lose your life. Succeed, and you’ll have no future anyway. You’ll spend the rest of your days on the run. Is that the life you want?”
Instead of answering, I grabbed the soju bottle and went to him.
As I quietly refilled his glass, words slipped out unbidden.
“...What should I do then? Forgive them?”
It didn’t seem like I’d poured much, but suddenly the glass overflowed.
Liquor spilled down without anywhere to go. Like tears.
“Console myself that the dead are just dead, toss aside all the remaining pain and injustice... and then what?”
“We live the lives we couldn’t.”
“...”
“How about buying that supercar Chunsik always wanted to ride in? Or opening that chicken joint James dreamed of? Not a bad idea.”
“...Foreman.”
“Unlike Dukbae, date someone, get married... wake up to your wife’s face, fall asleep watching your kids, live a peaceful life... deal with teenage angst from your son or daughter.”
The lives the cleanup crew dreamed of. I stared at the full glass and replied.
“If you were alive and I was dead... could you live like that, Foreman?”
A bold question.
Maybe he hadn’t expected it from me. He fell silent for a moment, then grinned.
“No, I couldn’t have. Probably would’ve tried planting bombs in the National Assembly and the Blue House.”
“...”
“Hey, hey. Don’t look at an adult like that.”
The foreman clicked his tongue. I let out a long sigh.
“It’s been ages since we’ve seen each other, and instead of cheering me on, you keep saying weird stuff.”
“Weird? Kid, everything I just said was straight from the heart.”
“...”
“But since I’m the kind of guy who’d do the same, how could I tell you to give up on revenge?”
He reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder. Amid the familiar booze smell, I felt his rough palm.
“Dung Beetle... no, Yeomyeong.”
“Yes.”
“No matter what you choose, I can understand. But...”
His palm brushed my face. My vision blurred, and the booze smell faded.
“We just want you to be happy.”
Before I could reply, he downed the last glass.
He’d already emptied a whole bottle. I looked around for another.
But there was nothing to see. Just thick, pitch-black darkness swirling around me and the foreman.
“Foreman...?”
I looked back at him, but where he’d sat, only an empty glass remained.
That’s when I...
Cheon Yeomyeong, the cleanup guild’s Dung Beetle who’d inherited the foreman’s name...
woke from the dream.
***
I opened my eyes to see Kim Mansu’s sweat-drenched face. The moment he saw my eyes, he yelled in surprise.
“Yeomyeong! You’re awake?”
Ah, Yeomyeong finally came to and sucked in a breath. My scorched lungs greedily drank in oxygen, and my stalled mind kicked back into gear.
“...The dragon? What happened to it?”
“Not dead yet. Passed out, though.”
As Kim Mansu said that, he gently lifted my upper body. Across the valley, I could see the dragon sprawled out.
Even without wings, legs, or eyes, it was still breathing. What tenacious vitality.
“Don’t worry too much. The military will handle it once they get here.”
While Kim Mansu tried to reassure me, the other mercenaries approached us.
None of them looked good. Especially Kwon the Captain—he’d taken the dragon’s magic head-on, and his body was covered in burns and blisters.
“How’s Yeomyeong’s condition? Does he need emergency evac?”
Of course, it was nothing compared to me, who’d eaten the magic full-force.
“...I’m okay-ish.”
“Okay-ish?”
Kwon stared at me in disbelief. My state was bad enough to make any doctor freak out.
“Give me about ten minutes... and I’ll recover.”
Ten minutes to regenerate wounds like these?
The mercenaries all eyed me in disbelief. But as if to prove my words, my body was already healing rapidly.
Seeing the hard-to-heal burns close in real time, new flesh sprouting, Kwon let out a sigh of relief.
“Good. Then we won’t lose the hero who saved Manchuria right here.”
Hero who saved Manchuria. Embarrassing as it was, no one there thought it was wrong.
If not for Yeomyeong... Manchuria would surely have fallen.
But for someone who’d achieved such a feat, Yeomyeong’s expression wasn’t great.
“It’s not over yet. Right now...”
As he started to explain, someone dropped from the sky.
Thud!
Pasun. Cloaked in dark red mana like a cape over his tattered winter gear, he landed right in the middle of Yeomyeong and the mercenaries.
“Hey.”
A smile crossed his androgynous face. The mercenaries tensed but didn’t show open hostility.
Partly because they’d just fought the dragon together... but mostly the gap in power.
Even at full strength, maybe. But fighting him now? Victory wasn’t guaranteed.
Of course, Pasun didn’t care what the mercenaries thought. He looked only at Yeomyeong.
“Cheon Yeomyeong, you remember our deal, right?”
“...Yeah, I do.”
“Per our agreement, I’ll take the dragon’s inner core... no, its heart.”
Take the dragon’s heart? Kwon’s eyebrow twitched, but he didn’t move further.
Because Yeomyeong nodded like it was natural.
“Fine, the heart’s yours. Take it.”
But Pasun didn’t fly straight to the dragon. He glanced between it and Yeomyeong, then smirked.
“You’re handing it over surprisingly easy? Guess the dragon fight was rougher than I thought.”
“...Just keeping my promise.”
“Promise, promise...”
Pasun trailed off and gathered mana. The mercenaries jumped to their feet in unison.
“But if I recall, our deal was just to hold off on fighting each other. Remember?”
In that instant, something flashed from Pasun’s hand. At the same time, flames erupted from Kwon Captain’s hand up front.
Boom!!
Flames and gust clashed like a bomb blast, sending out a shockwave.
“Block it!”
The mercenary closest to Pasun threw a dagger even as the shockwave hit. Next moment, Pasun extended index and middle fingers, casually catching it.
He flicked his wrist, sending the dagger flying back like a ray of light. It sliced open the mercenary’s shoulder.
One down.
Pasun didn’t stop. He pointed at a mercenary raising a rifle, firing a finger gust.
The rifle and shoulder shattered simultaneously; the mercenary flew off into the distance.
Two left.
As he readied the next attack, Kwon Mongju charged. The captain’s flames were impressive, but that was it.
Pasun twisted his waist, dodging effortlessly. In the same motion, he punched the off-balance Kwon’s face.
Teeth shattered, blood sprayed, but Kwon didn’t back down. If anything, he burned his own body brighter, clinging to Pasun with even bigger flames.
“Gonna self-destruct?”
Pasun sneered at the desperate struggle and pulled back. From a safe distance, he opened his palm and unleashed a gust.
First, it smashed both knees. Then the shoulders. Finally, crushed the ribs.
In less than ten seconds, Kwon Mongju Captain hit the ground.
No—accurately, it took less than a minute for all four elite members of the First Death Mercenary Corps to fall.
Pasun tilted his head at Kim Mansu, who stood blocking Yeomyeong.
“How should I kill you?”
Kim Mansu didn’t answer. He gripped his last hand axe tight and glared at Pasun.
“Kid, I like your eyes. Good. I’ll gouge them out.”
Pasun spread his fingers, preparing a finger gust. Mana gathered for the final strike.
!
Something pierced his chest. Blood spurted late from the hole.
Only then did Pasun turn his head. In the empty air behind him moments ago, a pale hand held a revolver.
“Saintess, you fucking bitch...”
“Sorry. I’ve got this disease where I just gotta shoot any bastard I see.”
Crude provocation, unbelievable from the Saintess’s mouth.
Pasun fired a frenzied gust, but the Saintess vanished behind her invisibility cloak again.
“Saintess! You think hiding behind that cloak means I can’t kill you?”
Clutching his bleeding chest, Pasun yelled. It had narrowly missed his heart, but his frail body couldn’t withstand even that.
A crisis as dire as facing the dragon. The leisure in his head vanished, replaced by cold calculation.
‘Can’t find the Saintess right away. Kill Yeomyeong first. If he regenerates, I’ve got a shot at...’
The moment he thought of Yeomyeong and turned—Yeomyeong shot up from his spot.
Gone was the guy who couldn’t move a finger; in his hand gleamed the blue shortsword that had fired the Comet Sword.
“What?”
Regeneration was supposed to take ten minutes...
As the question hit Pasun’s mind, blue light flashed from Yeomyeong’s hand.
A chill blue shortsword through the throat.
That was the last sensation Pasun felt.
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